6/11/24 6:40PM Nationals @ Tigers

[Hongbit]

8 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

He has already won a championship in Boston where the media and fans criticize every move you make, so I doubt he was worried about the pressure of a pennant race.  It sucks that the Tigers couldn't make the deal, but it's difficult for me to blame an employee for making a personal choice when an employer is trying to move him across the county.  I don't really blame Harris either, but he is really the only one I can hold responsible.  

He was in his normal headspace in his time with Boston.  His time with the Tigers was marred by the still unknown traumatic family event that caused him to drop out of baseball.  I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume whatever happened still had a huge impact on his decision to reject the trade.    

[Tiger337]

4 minutes ago, Hongbit said:

He was in his normal headspace in his time with Boston.  His time with the Tigers was marred by the still unknown traumatic family event that caused him to drop out of baseball.  I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume whatever happened still had a huge impact on his decision to reject the trade.    

I don't doubt that the incident affected his decision.  It just seems unlikely to me that not wanting to be in a pennant race was the reason.  

[casimir]

3 hours ago, tiger2022 said:

Thanks for adding your input to the stupidity.

@Dan Gilmore is the straw that stirs the stupid drink.

[casimir]

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

You can slice it any which way, but the product on the field is not entertaining to watch 4 nights out of five

So schedule more day games.

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, Hongbit said:

I think his head not being in a good place at the time and him not wanting to jump into the pressure cooker of the Dodgers in a pennant race also seems very believable.  It’s all speculation and we will never know.  

I understand that Eduardo Rodriguez is a sensitive soul who hurts sometimes, but that doesn’t mitigate the fact that he ****ed over the team in a wholly unprofessional manner on multiple occasions, so he was a d*** as well. 

Edited June 13 by chasfh

[Hongbit]

14 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I understand that Eduardo Rodriguez is a sensitive soul who hurts sometimes, but that doesn’t mitigate the fact that he ****ed over the team in a wholly unprofessional manner on multiple occasions, so he was a d*** as well. 

I absolutely agree with you.  I am not a fan of his at all.

I’m trying to make sense of what could’ve happened understanding that it’s all speculative.  

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, Hongbit said:

I absolutely agree with you.  I am not a fan of his at all.

I’m trying to make sense of what could’ve happened understanding that it’s all speculative.  

If Eduardo were to drop out of baseball and get counseling for his myriad problems, I would applaud him for his integrity. But as long as he's living life and conducting his affairs while projecting himself as a mentally healthy and competent person, he's fully responsible for his actions deserving of all the reasonable criticism coming to him, and he doesn't earn any speculative sympathy in my book. I respond only to what I know I have seen him do. I don't hate the guy since he neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, and I wish him all the best as I would anybody I don't know personally.

[Tiger337]

Eduardo is sure getting a lot of hate for a guy who led the team in WAR last year.  😃

Edited June 14 by Tiger337

[Longgone]

12 hours ago, Hongbit said:

I think his head not being in a good place at the time and him not wanting to jump into the pressure cooker of the Dodgers in a pennant race also seems very believable.  It’s all speculation and we will never know.  

What doesn’t make sense was the earlier assertion that ERod would’ve gone to the Dodgers if he was paid more money and that somehow fell on Scott Harris to make happen.   Not sure how that would be the Tigers responsibility as the team trading an expiring contract. 

Players aren’t generally very involved in the negotiations, agents have their parameters and cut the best deal possible. I believe this is all on the agent.

[casimir]

16 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

How about trading foe Nuck Maton? Letting Candelario walk? Letting Spencer Turnbull walk?

Maton and Sands didn't work out.  Vierling has.  And Soto has returned to his over 5+ BB9 neighborhood.  An everyday player in exchange for a volatile LHRP?  I'll take that trade.

Candelario was a decision that could have gone either way.  They released him and he had a good season which culminated in a multiyear deal which has started out well.  I'd have brought him back for his last arbitration season, but I understand that decision wasn't exactly a slam dunk.  It happens.

The relationship between Turnbull and the Tigers had soured to the point where he wasn't coming back.  He hadn't had enough recent production to where he was a tradable commodity.  So, he was released or non tendered.  In terms of the transaction, it is what it is.  Whatever happened behind the scenes, we don't and likely won't know for certain.

[chasfh]

16 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

People do it all the time. It's not win and loss stat, it's how many earned runs a pitcher allows per 9 innings. Kind of important.

If a reliever comes in with the bases loaded, walks the first three guys he sees letting three runs score, then gets the next three guys out without giving up a run, he has given up zero runs and his ERA drops.

[tiger2022]

I think whip is a much better stat to evaluate a pitcher.

[Longgone]

6 minutes ago, tiger2022 said:

I think whip is a much better stat to evaluate a pitcher.

If you want to evaluate a pitcher, you want to identify elements he can control. Walks, strikeouts, contact rate, etc. are things under a pitchers control, hits, runs, etc. are dependent on other factors.

[tiger2022]

Hits to a certain extent, but a pitchers control, velocity, and movement play a huge part in giving up hits.

[1984Echoes]

27 minutes ago, Longgone said:

If you want to evaluate a pitcher, you want to identify elements he can control. Walks, strikeouts, contact rate, etc. are things under a pitchers control, hits, runs, etc. are dependent on other factors.

I would still rather have a pitcher with a 0.89 WHIP and K's 7.4 per 9 and walks 3 per 9, who keeps runners off the bases for the most part, rather than a pitcher with a 1.39 WHIP even if he K's 11 per 9 and walks only 3 per 9.

WHIP works fine and dandy for me. It may even include nice groundball rates, avg. EV's, etc... 

But I find it to be a great one-stop shop number that tells me all I need to know.

If a guy is consistently between 0.90 and 1.10 WHIP year after year, and another guy is consistently 1.28-1.48 WHIP every year, I choose the lower WHIP guy. I don't need to look at anything else. Simple. And an easy choice.

[Longgone]

13 minutes ago, tiger2022 said:

Hits to a certain extent, but a pitchers control, velocity, and movement play a huge part in giving up hits.

So does the defense, the park, randomness, once the ball is hit the pitcher has no control, he does have control over the rate contact is made.

[tiger2022]

That's why I said the pitchers control, velocity, and movement has a huge effect.  And the pitcher does have a lot of control over what type of contact is made on his pitches.  Sometimes weak hit balls find an open spot, but if you throw it right down the middle with zero movement, you end up like Phil Coke.

[Sports_Freak]

3 hours ago, chasfh said:

If a reliever comes in with the bases loaded, walks the first three guys he sees letting three runs score, then gets the next three guys out without giving up a run, he has given up zero runs and his ERA drops.

OK....do you think Turnbull is better than 3 or 4 of the current Tigers relief pitchers?

[tiger2022]

2 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

OK....do you think Turnbull is better than 3 or 4 of the current Tigers relief pitchers?

I think Hoyt Wilhelm is probably better than a few of them.

[Toddwert]

2 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

OK....do you think Turnbull is better than 3 or 4 of the current Tigers relief pitchers?

so would Trevor Bauer but I dont want him near this team

[gehringer_2]

7 hours ago, Longgone said:

So does the defense, the park, randomness, once the ball is hit the pitcher has no control, he does have control over the rate contact is made.

The fact the he has “no control” in that  respect may be true, but in the real world once all factors are aggregated, good pitchers still give up fewer base runners than bad ones and that is measured quite handily by WHIP. 

Edited June 14 by gehringer_2

[Tiger337]

The only things a pitcher controls consistently from year to year are strikeouts and walk rate and those things stabilize pretty quickly, so if something changes you'll notice it fairly quickly.  A pitcher has some control over hits and home runs, but there is a lot of variation.  Things like barrel rate and hard hit rate are not nearly as predictive for pitchers as they are for batters.  It's hard to reliably evaluate pitchers beyond BB and K rate.  It's not impossible, but there is a lot of guess work involved.  WHIP is better than ERA for relievers, but neither is very predictive of future performance.  

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

The only things a pitcher controls consistently from year to year are strikeouts and walk rate and those things stabilize pretty quickly, so if something changes you'll notice it fairly quickly.  A pitcher has some control over hits and home runs, but there is a lot of variation.  Things like barrel rate and hard hit rate are not nearly as predictive for pitchers as they are for batters.  It's hard to reliably evaluate pitchers beyond BB and K rate.  It's not impossible, but there is a lot of guess work involved.  WHIP is better than ERA for relievers, but neither is very predictive of future performance.  

and that raises the question of whether pitchers are really inconsistent or just their measurements. Undoubtedly  both to more or less degree depending on the case. With relievers you have the added issue that the sample sizes can be too small in a given season to get reasonable stability. Numbers from a guy that puts up 200 IP are going to be more reliable, assuming you don't have changes in health, and of course we don't necessarily ever know about those - a la the year Verlander was pitching over the abdominal tear (aka sports hernia).

In the case of WHIP, I'm not going to argue it's accurate enough to compare guys on different teams to a 0.1, but taken inside a staff, where the guys are pitching more or less to the same opposition in the same ballparks, it's going to be a pretty good relative number once the sample size is reasonable. FIP is valuable, but I think the assumption a pitcher has no control over batted balls is too extreme to be completely valid either. Swing and miss is certainly going to be inversely correlated with barrel rate but not perfectly. But there is still a different between missing because of movement and missing because of misreading the pitch type and also what areas of the zone a pitchers prefers pitching to. Pitchers who 'fool' batters on pitch type are likely to give up harder contact when the batter guesses right than a guy that gets by more on pitch movement, so there are still additional complexities to OPS against beyond just K's and walks.

Edited June 14 by gehringer_2